Though it be not written down, let it be known that I am drunk.

Alcohol, a vast ocean of specific knowledge. Do you know— no, listen. Do you know? All alcohol is pure spirits, all flavors come later, after the sugars have been eaten, passed through the invisible dying cells of the flocculent yeast, up the copper tubes, down to the terracotta pots, there to reswallow traces of earth, of pear, of agave, of horseradish, of nothing in particular. In Xeres, the solera drips across decades, the angels, wings and eyes and fire, dip their mouths toward the open barrels and take their share.

In the bar, the bartenders love her. Cedar asks questions, offers no wisdom, but is enthusiastic about everything. This one tastes like dirt. This one like apples. This one comes from the highlands, you can tell (they say) because of how unsweet it is. Cedar, who has swallowed the spirits of a hundred cities, nods and gasps and prods, and they love her for it. A mouth to taste and an ear to listen. She learns, as she learned the rope paths between the trees, as she learned to harvest ears, storing it all within her word hoard.

You are drunk, they tell her, eventually: go home. Yes, she says, indeed I am, I am made merry with alcohol; and by this grown wise.

There’s a river that winds its way between the two cities, but the last time Cedar saw it was when she first arrived. It’s been weeks, and she must have crossed over it a dozen times or more, because the road signs change, the colors of the streetlights change, the paving stones changes, but she hasn’t seen anything but stone and brick and frosted glass underfoot. In the cafes and bars and libraries and public baths, she hears running water; the air is everywhere heavy and vibrant with moisture, but there’s no end to the concrete she can find.

She remembers bridges, but only in retrospect; when she turns back on herself to find them, they’re gone, hidden behind another gently curving row of buildings. She climbs to sit among the rooftop gardens with the birds, and off in the distance she sees the shifting reflection of sunlight on water, but each street she takes toward it curves back on itself or is shuttered by a rusted gate, a collapsed building, a pile of unmoving maintenance equipment.

The longer she looks, the fewer people she sees. When she arrived, the streets were choked with bodies, faces obscure behind upturned collars and downturned hats, eyes shining in the evening with malice or desire or good humor, but now? The streets are empty of everything save the wind, the sound of leaves against the pavement, the ghost of the river. Her footsteps echo off the buildings, double and triple themselves. Every door she tries is locked, every business newly closed.

Once a month all the men in Rosehip grow wings and fly off, leaving behind only women and children. “Where do they go?” Cedar asks the woman whose floor she’s crashing on when they’re not hooking up.

“Who knows?” says the woman and shrugs. “Who cares?”

Well, Cedar cares, for one, so she makes friends with a long-legged but sad-faced boy and convinces him to take her up with them. “You gotta be chill,” he says, as she clings to his back.

Cedar snorts. “I’m always chill.”

“You are never, ever chill.” They’re riding on an aerial, and it’s shockingly quiet. “Look, just keep quiet and don’t praise, uh, God. We’ve had problems with that before.”

Cedar just laughs and laughs. The great bowl of the world wheels below them.

Cedar has been in Gestas for almost a year, and she’s starting to get desperate. The city has wrapped itself around her foot like a snare and she’s contemplating amputation. She never wants to linger, but she can’t break free; every road leads back into town, every flight is canceled, every ferry is delayed. Schedules and maps, like everything else, are a tissue of meaningless, pointless lies, knowledge gleefully hoarded for the sheer joy of hoarding.

She hasn’t learned anyone’s name — or, rather, has learned dozens of names for every one she’s met, inconsistently and maliciously shifting from moment to moment. Faces blur together, bodies melt and flow like wax whenever she turns her head. It is only her grinding, stubborn worthlessness that has kept her entire, and even then she has met herself several times turning a corner; the same crooked nose, the same nicotine stained hands, the same wide-spaced teeth. Gestas steals without remorse, but also without covetousness; her doppelgangers thrill to see her, spread their arms wide for a lingering hug.

She’s been pickpocketed hundreds of times, but she never has anything she can’t afford to lose, nothing anyone can meaningfully take from her, except the freedom to move. Gestas threatens that, but unknowing; roads may twist and maps may lie, but the sky does not. She hopes.

Cedar is drinking quietly in a dive bar in Gong, pointedly ignoring the bartender, when the demon appears like turning a corner, long blonde mane, red face, the sound of flutes. “No,” says the bartender flatly. “Get out.”

“I’m a paying customer,” the demon says, swaying.

“Absolutely not.” She reaches under the bar, comes out with a noisemaker, a long hollow stick with ridges on the side, and an abstract, glowering mask. “Leave now.” She whistles for the rest of the staff as she rounds the bar, the cooks and waiter with their own masks and noisemakers. They crowd toward the demon, circle it, growling and scraping and thumping arrhythmically.

“What the hell is this,” says the demon, hitches its nose up like an angry cat. “What are you doing? This sucks, stop this.”

Growl thumpa scrk scrk, they go, circling circling, the bartender flicks water from her bar rag in its face.

“Aaaaah, this sucks, you suck, you losers, fuck this, I’m going to take my money elsewhere, fuck this bar anyway, just stop it.“

They open a path to the door, stay right on the demon as it backs away, one step forward for every step back, no ground ceded, filling the air with noise.

When the bar has settled down again and everyone’s back to their spots, Cedar leans forward. “What was that about?”

“Fuckin’ demons,” the bartender growls. “Gotta nip it in the bud immediately when one of them comes in.” She rings a silver bowl set next to the register. “Gotta shut that shit down, or they take you over and you’re a demon bar now and that’s a PROBLEM.”